


The Marital Bed

by cuddlesome



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Image, Consent Issues, F/M, Forced Marriage, Insecurity, Intimacy, Mild Gore, Pining, Scars, Self-Hatred, Sexual Repression, Touch-Starved, Unhealthy Relationships, they're in love but they're also melodramatic and angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:00:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21988762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/pseuds/cuddlesome
Summary: This is not how it is meant to be and he knows it.
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Comments: 25
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Phantom for the first time on Broadway for Christmas and I'm a mess. 
> 
> Just assume for the purposes of the basic premise of this fic working that the angry mob and Raoul can't follow.

They must consummate their marriage on their wedding night. A lifetime of chastity enforced by his gruesome face won’t allow Erik to wait any longer. They need to—“fuck” sounds too harsh, “make love” rings cloying, dulcet—have sex. Now.

When she hits the duvet of the marital bed, supine, Christine goes stiff as the mannequin that bore her dress. Erik follows. He clambers forward on all fours until he hovers over her.

He buries his face in the silken curls to her left, a makeshift shield for his deformity. He turns to brush his swollen, uneven lips across her neck. Then Erik dispenses with the idea that he deigns to do something as tender as kissing. His student deserves some level of punishment for entertaining the thought of leaving him. Teeth and tongue slice and slide against her jugular, tasting the sweet salt of fear. Christine shivers, mewls, touches his raw cheek ever-so-briefly. Her butterfly-soft touch earns her a foul curse in her ear. She draws back.

He lifts a hand—trembling—and sweeps it over her waist, the swell of a hip. Somehow the movement is less fluid and confident than when he first touched her. Even so, he relishes in the sensation of the dress molded to her curves. Perfect despite never taking a single measurement nor fitting.

And then he stops, unsure of what to do with himself. What had come so naturally before, intertwining with Christine’s body and voice, now intimidates him. But then, before he’d had his sleek wig, his mask, his confidence that he would never allow her to see him for what he truly is.

Slowly, slowly, he shifts a few inches away, wiping his own saliva from his mouth with the back of his wrist. He won her. Why, then, doesn’t he feel victorious?

All this time, Christine does not attempt to reengage. Her eyes are distant. Does she dare think of her boy at this moment? Erik bares his teeth, uncaring how much more twisted it will make him appear. Or, at least, he doesn’t care up until she flinches away. He draws back, resting his hands on his knees.

“Spare a thought for me, won’t you, my wife?” The words taste like sand.

“I’ve thought of nothing but you for so long. You are all I ever see in dreams.” She turns her gaze on him. “In nightmares.”

Erik’s nerve fails him. He looks away.

“You could at least pretend to love me,” he whispers.

The bedclothes and her voluminous dress rustle thickly like disturbed undergrowth as she sits up.

“I do, God help me, I do.” She touches his hand. “That’s why it hurts so much to see you act like this.”

Her reluctant confession of feelings for him is dashed by what followed.

He yanks his hand away. “Like what?”

Christine hesitates.

“What, precisely, am I acting like?” He leans closer, forcing her to get an eyeful of his torn, bloated-corpse half. “Like a monster? Say it. Say it! Sing it if it so pleases you.”

“Nothing so striking. You are no phantom, nor are you an angel. You are acting like a horrid, evil man." Her tone softens. "And yet, even so… I want this. You and I together. Maybe even as much as you do.”

A lump rises in Erik’s throat. No. She lies.

“You can’t say such things. I fear I’ll go mad.” If he isn’t already.

“When I kissed you the first time,” she says, “it was to save Raoul.”

A tactical decision, then. Of course it was.

She wets her lips. “I kissed you again because I realized that, despite everything, I truly, deeply love you.”

That sentiment, that word, crushes him like nothing else. He bows forward, nearly in half, and begins to weep like a child.

“Christine… oh, Christine… you can’t, you can’t…”

He prepared himself for a marriage filled with her hate, one in which his gruesome face haunted her for a lifetime.

She rubs his upper back, alleviating the tension there. “I can and I do. Don’t try to tell me any differently. I love you, and I don’t even know your name.”

He confesses in between trembling sobs: “My name… my name is Erik.”

“Erik,” she says in a small voice, and he didn’t know how much he wanted to hear her say it until that very moment.

She shifts closer to run a hand over his twisted ugliness, wiping away his tears, soothing him. He will never get used to that, will he? Not even his mother deigned to touch him there.

Slowly, he sits up, allows her to touch him more extensively. Then the wound that never heals begins to ooze hot beneath her dainty hand. Wearing his mask too long irritated it and the tears are no help either.

“You’re hurt,” she exclaims, pink, kissable lips parting.

I always hurt, foolish girl, every second of every day of my miserable life, he thinks but doesn’t say. His heart pounds behind his eyes.

She takes out an embroidered handkerchief from within his waistcoat and dabs at the blood and serum and tears.

Erik can only stand her caring touch for so long.

“Enough,” he says.

She freezes.

He shuts his eyes, unable to bear the sight of her horrified expression. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

She pulls her hand away. “Am I causing you more pain?”

More than she could ever know.

“You," he says, "are only delaying the inevitable.”

She becomes angry, then, a gust of indignant air puffing hot from her mouth against his neck. He pictures the expression on her face, full lips parted, finely-lashed eyes narrowed, delicate nostrils flaring. He’d seen the expression a few times before when he criticized her during their singing lessons with especial harshness.

“Fine,” she says, crisp, in a tone reminiscent of Madame Giry’s.

Then she begins to undress him, starting by unbuttoning his shirt.

Erik’s eyes slam open. His fingers knot in the sheets. No, no, this isn’t how it’s meant to be. He sooner anticipated her running from him, as a rabbit would from a stoat bearing down on her back, than this.


	2. Chapter 2

Christine continues, undeterred, and doesn’t stop until his shirt hangs open; unbuttoned, untucked. Erik gapes at her. He does not assist her as she tugs his arms from his sleeves, but he does not fight her, either. She shoves his fine waistcoat and shirt to one side of the bed, far away from them.

He is in a state of total disillusionment, hands hovering midair but not quite going to cover himself. He notices for the first time that the air in the room is wet and cold. The finery that he had drenched it and the bed itself in do not counteract the sensation of being in a tomb. They might as well make their bed in a coffin.

If Christine shares his thoughts, she does not voice them. She lays back down and pulls her to him, mimicking their positioning from before. His arms become dead things, hands slide. He stops himself from collapsing fully. His weight crashing down on top of Christine would crush her as surely as the opera house caving in over their heads. Nevertheless, her tight bodice, the snow-white hills of warm fat that are her breasts, end up pressed to his bare skin. He can only wonder what she must be feeling. The sensation of his cold flesh against her cannot be pleasant.

And yet, there is no fear in her. Only nerves betray themselves in the way she bites her full lower lip. Her features are so delicate he half-expects it to bruise like a rose petal. 

How? How can she look at him like that?

Try as he might to hide even from himself, Erik is intimately aware of his appearance. The normalcy of his left half, even with all the best features accentuated with makeup, cannot make up for the mess on the other side. A warped amalgamation of tissue and raw flesh. As if God—if there is a God—became dissatisfied with his new creation’s face midway through shaping the clay and ripped his fingers through it in disgust. 

Christine, an angel, a mere messenger, looks upon him as if he is the most beautiful person in the world. It is confusing, maddening… gratifying.

He croaks her name and hates himself for it. Her name deserves nothing but the softest of caresses by the tongue, not the grunting of a monster. Where did his elegant voice disappear to?

“Erik,” she replies, unruffled, even happy at his hoarseness.

She darts her head forward, kisses his malformed cheek. Erik flinches.The skin is tender. Sensitive. She kisses him again, right on the swollen corner of his mouth. He rolls his eyes heavenward to stop the fresh tears from raining down on her beautiful face. 

Once he catches his breath, gets a hold of himself, he dares to push her skirts aside. She reaches down and moves them away, too. The ice of the wedding ring brushes his hand at the same time her fingers do. Once they are freed, legs strengthened by years of dancing twine around his lower back. Her stockings slip silken across his bare skin. With a twist and a shove, she neatly pushes him off of her.

It is in this moment that Erik wonders if she plans to run like he suspected from the start. If she shall flee from the room, fling herself into the lake, and drown alongside her suitor. Liquid rage flows through him in place of blood at the mere thought. He huffs an angry, disappointed noise. Of course she would do this to him.

And then the moment passes and Christine sits atop his stomach, pinning him more with her heavy skirts than her own slight weight. She tosses her curls over her shoulder. 

“You must warn me before you do something like that again, my dear,” Erik says, recovering himself.

He smiles at her, but the expression is injected with the momentary heated emotion he felt.

Christine is childish, near-impish in her response, stoking his anger further.“Must I?”

“Yes,” he hisses, propping himself up on his elbows and moving his upper body toward her in one harsh move.

She leans back just far enough that her clothed buttocks brush against the bulge in his trousers that had been hot and pulsing since the start of the encounter.

Erik moans something profane, something entirely unmusical. He falls back to the bed. Christine bites her lip, blushes hotly, shifts away from the stark sign of arousal. As she should.

He is vulnerable enough as it is. Mask gone. Half-clothed. His own nakedness in the presence of Christine mortifies him. If it were up to him, he would claim her in the safety of the all-encompassing cloak he wore during Don Juan Triumphant. She would only have to see her husband’s hands as their bodies interlocked. 

His mouth dries at the thought of making it that far. Of ever getting what he had long ago deemed impossible. If he thinks too intimately about their current position, of Christine’s willingness, he fears he will faint like a ballerina scared of her own shadow.

But he cannot falter now. Erik sets his jaw. No backward glances.

The machinations of removing her clothing is far more complicated than his. Unlacing, unhooking, only to reveal another layer. Erik’s self-congratulation about her wedding dress turns to irritation. He begins to all but claw at the barrier keeping him from what he wants. 

Something tears. He doesn’t care what. 

Christine gasps. Perhaps he only imagines it, but Erik swears the noise is one of pleasure as well as surprise. Her legs flex around his midsection. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. They flit from the air beside his face to his shoulders to what little remains of his hair and then back to his shoulders.

He can smell her arousal. That hot, wet, tang hiding underneath the powder and lace and sweat. It drives him on.


	3. Chapter 3

No sooner does he have her bare than he wants to be inside. Erik doesn’t possess the patience to undress himself entirely, so he settles for freeing his cock alone. It’s long and thin and crooked to the left, because heaven forbid any part of him be especially handsome.

Christine doesn’t seem to notice the imperfection. She swallows wetly. Her little hand curls around his shaft, guiding it towards her warm center. Erik lays back on his elbows, lips parting. Christine is far braver than he expected. What had the ballet rats told her between practice sessions? What had her boy taught her..?

As if sensing his train of thought—or perhaps his face betrayed him, he’d never been good at hiding his expressions except behind the safety of a mask and the dark—Christine says with a blush, “I’ve… overheard things in the opera house. It gave me ideas.”

“Such wonderful ideas,” Erik murmurs. “Wonderful, delicious—ah—”

She’s unbelievably slick between her legs, warm and pliant and waiting to accept him. Biting her lower lip, Christine sinks down onto his cock. For a long moment they both stay still. Then she moves and he moans, claws at the sheets.

He never asked her to dance for him—how could ballet skills compare to her voice?—but she dances now. Every movement is deliberate, sending ripples through her muscles, bouncing the meat of her dainty breasts. Erik does not dare move in tandem, too afraid that he will ruin her beauty with his pawing at her. At least, he doesn’t until she guides his hands to her curves, encouraging him to explore. Only then does he dare to shift his hips, to drive himself deeper inside. 

He’s rewarded with soft cries and a look of ecstasy on her face. Warmth rises in his belly at the knowledge that he’s pleasuring her so. 

Christine isn’t satisfied with his state of only partial undress. Even as she bucks and moans, she gropes at his torso. He doesn’t know what she expects she’ll find there. His is far from the best example of the male form. Still, her hands rove with undisguised reverence over his skeletal chest. He, in turn, allows himself to sink his fingers into the firm flesh of her arse. She makes a delightful noise and clenches around him. Muzzily, through the haze of his own pleasure, Erik recalls some of the information he’d read in, ahem, educational novels in particularly lonely times. With this in mind, he shifts one of his hands to her front, just above where they are joined, and rubs with his fingertips.

In response, filthy words that he never thought would issue from his sweet angel suddenly fill the room. Satisfaction flows hotly through Erik. She will be corrupted by him and he can’t much bring himself to care at that moment.

He doesn’t last much longer. He can’t. The sensation of her reaching her peak around him is too much. 

Even once they separate their genitals, they cling to each other, exhausted.

His dreams of having a wife are being fulfilled. And yet, even in that moment of ecstasy, the damnable human emotion of guilt tugs at him for how he brought Christine to such circumstances. 

They lay entangled in bed. Christine drifts off to sleep, snoring in an inelegant way. It’s adorable. 

Erik can almost pretend that his wildest fantasy came true. There’s a nagging guilt, though, a thought that couldn’t be driven away even by the soft press of her breasts to the side of his ribcage.

He allows himself to pet her curls one last time before he extricates himself from her. After cleaning himself of the worst of the bodily fluids, but not so much that he can’t still smell her on him, he redresses. He gathers up the Aminta dress and brings it to the bedroom.

He discovers her awakening, midway into investigating the spot where he’d lain with one dainty hand. She turns her confused gaze on him and his heart breaks.

“You must go. I’ve wronged you by keeping you here with me for even this long. For planting my seed in your belly, having you risk a child that looks like…” His hand hovers in the air above the right side of his face. 

Christine does not take her proffered clothes. Her mouth turns down.

“Now that you’ve had your way with me you want to be rid of me, is that it?”

“You know it isn’t. I’m freeing you, Christine. I’m not holding you to the deal. You made your decision under duress.” 

The words are so calm, so rational, so articulately delivered, that he has to wonder if God or some other force puppeteered him to say as much. To do the right thing, even if it came too late.

Silently, she redresses. The moments seem to stretch on for a millennia. Her lower lip wobbles. She bites her lip, looks down at her hand, and carefully removes the signet ring that he had given her.

“No, keep it—” He begins to say.

“I’m coming back for it,” Christine says, pressing it into his hand, “so you have to keep it safe for me until then.”

He almost drops it. The possibilities of what is to come from such a declaration are innumerable, most of them negative.

Her boy will probably smell the sex on her even if she washes off in the lake. Perhaps he’ll come slay Erik like the righteous young hero he is. If that happens, at least he’ll only have one true regret, that he hadn’t been a gentler lover to her, that they had to reach that point of true lovemaking through such hardship.

“I will leave you for now, Erik,” she says, “if only to keep them away. But I shall return to you.”

“Christine… you mustn’t, you mustn’t.”

“I shall! And even the Opera Ghost himself cannot stop me from doing so.” She cups his cheek—the one that’s twisted, deformed, as if there’s nothing wrong with it at all—and kisses him again.

Somehow, that sweetness makes it all the worse when she leaves. Still covered in remnants of their fluids beneath his clothes, Erik reaches for the veil. Perhaps it would be better if she had just run to begin with. He wouldn’t have had a taste of what being with her is like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> / rolls up with Starbucks/ I finally wrote the end to my first phic and it only took me... / looks at watch/ two centuries. 
> 
> Please be sure to leave me a comment if you enjoyed it!


End file.
